Which law was broken? Be specific.
The US Constitution, specifically the part where the President is supposed to have the advice and consent of the Senate for court appointments. And yes, they could have legally kept Garland out of that seat by refusing their consent, but they didn’t do it. Don’t ask me why they opted for the illegal route instead of the legal one.
The Senate didn’t give their consent. There was nothing illegal about it.
Because historically it was the route for denying Advice & Consent in place at the founding of the United States.* Those Republicans are all about what the founders would have done, don’tcha know?
- Yes. Really. Not being facetious at all. We went all over this (start from post #38 and note cite in post #45) last year.
Whereas I would apply that chainsaw to the military budget first. 30% cut immediately, ramping up to 50% in 5 years. Estate tax reinstated and raised to 50% minimum. Top income tax bracket at 75%. Eliminate the carried interest loophole and everything else that benefits Wall Street. Establish rules that reward actual job creation, and punish sheer multigenerational capital acquisition.
From a tactical standpoint the Democrats should start with something popular. I propose they should start with net neutrality, passing a simple bill to make net neutrality the law of the land.
Has any court ever sided with your view that what they did was “illegal”, or is this just like your own personal, non-standard definition of the word?
The Senate denied its consent, but in a way that was more violative of the norms of the institution, rather than any law, or of the Constitution itself, at least in terms of the reach of the Constitution as established by court precedent.
Which is why, when the Dems get back into power, they should say 'screw the norms, we’ll change the Senate rules to suit us, we’ll block all of Trump’s judicial nominations, screw blue slips once we get back in the White House, at the state level we’ll gerrymander the hell out of any large states we control - if there’s no issue of principle, we’re gonna play hardball right back at ‘em.’
Looking back, if we’d gotten rid of the filibuster in January 2009, we could have passed a bigger stimulus bill that would have gotten Americans back to work a lot more quickly and kept people from losing their homes. We could have passed a better Obamacare that had a public option and wasn’t nearly so complicated. We could have passed card check to make it easier for workers to unionize. We could have passed laws making ‘dark money’ nonexistent, so that people could see who was behind a media campaign on some local issue. (Who knows why the Koch brothers sought to keep Louisville from developing cheap municipal broadband, but it shouldn’t take investigative work to uncover stuff like this.)
We should never make that mistake again. We will obey the Constitution and the laws, but never again should we let institutional norms prevent us from serving the American people. The GOP dispenses with the norms they want to, and when it’s our turn, so should we. No unilateral disarmament.
The Republicans could have gotten rid of the filibuster and passed a better* tax bill, but they didn’t. I’m not seeing the Democrats getting rid of the filibuster, nor should they.
*by their definition
Thanks to McConnell’s actions re: Garland, the possibility of one party’s Senate confirming (or possibly even considering) another party’s President’s SCOTUS nominee is gone, at least without some major changes in politics. The rationalization will be easy – if the Dems get the Senate in 2018, and Trump gets a vacancy, the Dems can and will just say that they are using the “McConnell rule” about vacancies “close” to an election (when “close” can be defined however one wants). Alternately, they can say they won’t consider any nominee not named Merrick Garland.
The justification doesn’t really matter any more. The possibility of bipartisanship on this kind of thing is dead. Which means SCOTUS nominees will get younger and younger, and more and more on the edge of one side or the other (unlike Garland who had been long praised by conservatives and liberals alike for years, including even being suggested as a good nominee by Orrin Hatch), until I’m very worried that crackpots on either side decide that good politics means that when their side has both the Senate and WH, removing the other side’s SCOTUS justices by any means possible is acceptable.
Not sure how the institutions of America continue at that point. Well done, McConnell (and enablers)!
While you guys are participating in your same old fight, you’re missing this question. It’s the crux of the entire matter.
Trump might sign such a bill because it’s clear he doesn’t actually give a fuck about the ACA or 90% of the policy issues that come before him. He’s driven by popularity ratings and what gets him the best headlines. Should it become to his benefit to change his mind on the ACA or National Parks or whatever - discounting tax issues that he directly benefits from - he’ll change and make up some bullshit story about how he’s always been for it…but in a slightly different form.
That’s what you fine people are missing. Trump believes in nothing except his own ego and advancement. He’ll do the expedient thing in almost all issues. Confront him with Speaker Pelosi (or Ellison) and Majority Leader Schumer and he’ll suddenly be lefty as all get out. It won’t even occur to him that he’s pivoting as holding a principled political position is foreign to his temperament.
But the GOP tax bill is wildly unpopular, so why doesn’t he veto it?
Trump does not like to be repudiated, and he is quick to hit back at anyone who tries to hit him. I could see him vetoing Democratic bills just because it would damage his ego to see the bills he backed overturned.
For example, one thing we hear over and over even from his supporters is “he shouldn’t tweet so much”, and yet he keeps tweeting. He is ego driven, and if you threaten his ego, you get retaliated against regardless of whether doing so is popular or not.
At least we agree about this much.
Can you think of any norms the Democrats have dispensed with, or do you really see it as only a Republican thing?
That was their choice, and I’m sure they (i.e. Mitch) had their reasons. My WAG is that (a) they’re gambling that the Dems won’t get rid of the filibuster, and (b) they can get close enough to everything they want via reconciliation that their gain from killing the filibuster isn’t worth the likely losses from the Dems being freed from it when they get control.
With respect to ‘nor should they,’ you and I and most people on these boards are old enough to remember a time when the filibuster was an occasional weapon, rather than a 60-vote requirement to pass practically anything. I’d be happy to return to those days, and I think it would be possible to fashion a filibuster rule that would be usable, but would involve enough time and effort on the part of the minority party that it would be used quite infrequently.
But if it’s strictly a choice between the filibuster as it currently works, and no filibuster at all, it should be dispensed with. A 60-vote threshold means that nothing gets done in the absence of the combination of a supermajority in the Senate and a majority in the House. Other than for 15 weeks in late 2009 and early 2010, neither party has had that sort of advantage since 1978.
Recently? No and yes.
Back before 1994, when Dems took control of Congress for granted, sure, it happened a number of times.
I’ll just say that I’m going to agree to disagree with you on the “should” part.
But do you think the Democrats will? I’d be shocked if they did. Both parties know they’ll be in the minority a good chunk of the time.
Really? Nothing Harry Reid may have done circa 2013 came to mind?
Oh sorry, I didn’t think of that. Kinda silly to bring it up, given that it was necessitated by another violation of norms - that of the GOP choosing to wholesale block Dem court nominees.
Just a SYG on Reid’s part. Mitch shot first. 
Fair enough. 
I wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t. I’d be more like pleasantly surprised than shocked if they did. Because not killing the filibuster is the express route back to the minority.
Here’s the deal - and I think this is even starting to sink in with the Dem leadership: you run for office, saying, “If you elect us, we’ll do X, Y, and Z.” Then you’re elected, and you’ve got a majority in both houses, but you can’t do shit because of the filibuster.
The public doesn’t think much about Senate procedure. Most people don’t think about it at all. All they know is you ran on doing X, Y, and Z, and there you are apparently running things, and you didn’t do those things you promised.
Next election, political junkies on the left will still vote Dem, but more marginally attached voters will shrug their shoulders and say, “why bother? All those great promises turned out to be meaningless. Dems don’t ever mean what they say. Fuck 'em.” Or not even think about it that much, even.
IF there’s a road back to a more or less permanent Dem majority, it goes through killing the filibuster, or turning it into something that can only be used in a few extreme cases each Congress. And even if the Dems don’t get a long-term majority, if they deliver on their promises and the GOP eventually gets in and tries to undo the Dems’ good work - well, we’re seeing how that’s working out for them right now.